Monday, June 20, 2016

A Personal Conundrum

We should ourselves decide what is beautiful.
I have to admit it. Honestly, I could not take another step with this path, write another word of this blog if I didn't own this. I, and we, live with a massive conundrum, a dissonance, a disturbance in the force. That conundrum is this. We all know how divisive and demeaning the apparel industry has become, pitting people against each other for the prize of being the coolest, and most chic. Who has the hottest new Nikes? Who wears Prada? The ultimate goal being the most lean, hot, hip, and connected person with clothes that convey all that to the random observer.

What makes it complex is that we are by our natures profoundly attracted to beauty in its most elevated forms, even though most of us do not have the wherewithal to attain it. We desire the ultimate. It calls us. We want to be it. And the vast majority of us live outside of that goal, and always will. We have neither the genetics, the fortitude, or the cash to make it so, but still we yearn. We yearn constantly. We dream and vision. We ache and pine. Sometimes we choose to reject it utterly, though we cannot step entirely outside of the conversation, unless we go nude.

What we forget is this. It is we who decide what is beautiful. You and me, individually decide this incredibly important thing. Me, you, us. We decide this. No one else can, or does, unless we give them the power to. That, to our displeasure, is what we have done. This massive industry trailing trillions of dollars of profit behind it towers over us giving us pronouncements about what we should be, because we gave them that power over us, willingly.

I will not, cannot allow someone else to decide how and why I should be attractive or worthy. I spent too many years of my life cowtowing to other people's ideas of what was good and mete. I am my own best judge of myself, noone else. I take my own self to task, and make of myself my own version of beauty and attractiveness. And this is what we all can do. It is what we all should do.
I decide what I believe is beautiful, what I believe is functional, what I believe is worthy. No one else does. We, you and me, need to take this power back to us. If the Attire language is to speak effectively to us all, we must give away the desire to be herd beasts who cling to sameness. If Attire is to truly become a language that we can all use with equal utility, then we must let go of the dicta of strangers who know not our lives, know not our concerns, and care nothing for our reality. In reality, if you and me are to become fully ourselves, we have to step away from this obsessive thing we have created and clung to.

The huge, powerful deity of the Apparel Industry wants one thing above all others, profit. It seeks not to make you a better person. It cares nothing about your soul, or your needs, or your true desires. It wants profit. If it can get profit by pandering to your superficial fantasies, then it will do so. What is massively sad is this. The Attire Industry could be even more profitable if it listened, really listened to what we want and need. If it moved itself forward to address the changing realities of the human community, and gave us less sameness and more individuality, it could be even more profitable for them, and even more effective for us all. If the Apparel Industry served the individual, as technology has finally made possible, then everyone would benefit from it.
What has happened however is that we have allowed ourselves to be shoehorned into manners of being that have little relation to who we really are, or wish to be, all in service to some fantasy of what is lovely at the moment, that is disseminated to us from fashion media and designers, who have little real world connection to us.

So, the conundrum remains. I and you desire this fantastical vision of perfection, even when we know we will never get there. I will never be 5'10" with an 8 pack and a chiseled jaw. You might never be a size 2 with pneumatic breasts. Whoever we are, whatever our shape or our coloration we already are beautiful. At the baseline we are all humans, born of the same family, and living on the same small sphere. It only remains for the Fashion Industry to understand the fact that we are all beautiful.

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About Me

Here you will find a place to move behind the surface of fashion and attire, to look at its deeper meanings and motivations. Everything and anything from the ancient world to the most outrageously edgy is up for discussion. Dive right in and have a great time!
I've been a student of costume history and the sociology of apparel both formally, and informally for 40 years. I've also worked as a professional costumer. And I have a passion for all things relating to how we manifest ourselves in a physical sense, and what it means about us.